4.  The applicants are Jehovah’s Witnesses belonging to various congregations in Moscow. In 2004, the Moscow courts banned the local religious organisation of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Moscow.[1]
5.  In early 2006, the applicant Mr Krupko, acting on behalf of the Administrative Centre of Jehovah’s Witnesses, signed a rental contract with the Academy of Agriculture for the purpose of holding religious meetings in the academy’s assembly hall (актовый зал) twice a week. By the time of the events, the meetings had been being held for approximately ten weeks.
6.  The most solemn and significant religious meeting for Jehovah’s Witnesses, their families and supporters, known as the annual celebration of the Memorial of the Lord’s Evening Meal, was scheduled to begin at approximately 8 p.m., after sundown on 12 April 2006. Around four hundred people, including the four applicants, gathered for the service.
7.  At 8:50 p.m. police officers, led by the chief of the Lyublino police station, arrived in substantial numbers at the building. The building was cordoned off by the police units whose deployment included ten police vehicles, two minibuses, an armed unit of the Special Police Force (OMON) and dozens of other officers in uniform.
8.  The police chief went on stage, took over the microphone and announced that the meeting was unlawful and that the participants were to disperse. Those in attendance complied with the order. The police officers segregated the male individuals from the rest of the group and made them stand in the corridor behind the hall. Fourteen male members of the congregation were escorted into the minibuses waiting outside. The police then proceeded to search the premises and took away a few boxes of religious literature and some documents from the notice board.
9.  The applicants were brought to the Lyublino police station where they were placed in a holding room and collectively photographed. Their identity documents were taken away. Their lawyer, Mr S., was not allowed to visit them at the police station.
10.  The applicants were released shortly after midnight.
11.  On the following day, more than twenty press agencies, including a federal television channel, reported on the disruption of the service and the detention of participants.
12.  The four applicants brought proceedings before the Lyublinskiy District Court of Moscow, seeking a declaration that the police had unlawfully disrupted a service of worship, removed religious literature, taken them to the police station, photographed and detained them and hindered the work of their counsel. They claimed compensation in respect of non-pecuniary damage.
13.  On 15 June 2006 the District Court gave judgment, making the following findings of fact:
“It was established that the plaintiff[s] and approximately 400 fellow believers ... had gathered for a service of worship on 12 April 2006 in the assembly hall ... The service was stopped by police officers of the Lyublino police station who declared the meeting illegal and demanded that the hall be vacated. Mr Krupko, Mr Burenkov, Mr Solovyov and Mr Anorov were detained and escorted to the Lyublino police station to give statements.
These circumstances, including the curtailment of the religious service ... were confirmed by the representative of [the Lyublino police station]. His arguments that the plaintiffs were not detained, but went of their own accord, are unfounded. The fact of detention is corroborated by the testimonies of witnesses ... the entries in the register of persons detained or escorted to the police station ... which read that the plaintiffs were escorted to the police station [for the reasons contained in] report no. KUS-5172, and the written statements of the detainees. Records of the detention and escorting to the police station were not compiled.”
14.  The District Court held that the police had lawfully stopped the service of worship:
“Pursuant to section 16 §§ 2 and 5 of the Religions Act ... religious organisations shall conduct religious services ... in religious buildings ... and in other places provided to religious organisations for such purposes ...
In other cases, public religious services ... shall be conducted in accordance with the procedure established for conducting meetings, marches and demonstrations.
The assembly hall of the Academy of Agriculture ... does not meet the requirements established by the above-mentioned legal provisions for buildings, structures and other places provided for conducting religious rites by religious organisations. That is, since the plaintiffs belong to a religious organisation, the public religious service [they held] in a secular establishment should have been carried out in accordance with the procedure established by the Public Gatherings Act, as provided for by section 16 § 5 of the Religions Act ...
As follows from the statements of the plaintiffs, they are not members of the Moscow Community of Jehovah’s Witnesses – the religious organisation whose activity was banned in Moscow by the judgment of the Golovinskiy District Court dated 26 March 2004 – and they exercise their right to freedom of religion ... having united not as a religious organisation but as the Lyublinskaya and Krasnodonskaya religious groups. In light of the above, the court considers that, in accordance with section 7 of the Religions Act, only premises provided for the use of the religious group by its members could be used for conducting services of worship ...
The court considers that the actions of the police officers in stopping the religious ritual in the building of the Academy of Agriculture ... in which around 400 people were participating, without having observed the [notification] procedure for conducting meetings, marches and demonstrations, were well grounded.”
15.  Nevertheless, the District Court considered that the police officers had acted unlawfully in detaining the applicants:
“In accordance with Article 20 § 2 of the Code of Administrative Offences, violations of the established procedure for organising or conducting meetings, marches and demonstrations is a ground for instituting administrative offence proceedings. However, as follows from the testimony of [the representative of the police station], no elements of an administrative offence were established in the actions of the plaintiffs and no records of an administrative violation, detention, escorting to the police station and administrative arrest were compiled. That is, there were no grounds for detaining [the plaintiffs] or escorting them to the police station.”
16.  The District Court summarily rejected the remainder of the claims:
“The claims concerning the removal of religious literature and passports, the photographing [of the applicants] or impediments caused to counsel are unsubstantiated. The applicants’ and their witnesses’ statements in that connection are contradictory, thus making it impossible to establish the relevant facts ...”
17.  The applicants lodged an appeal, submitting that the District Court had misinterpreted the law in that the premises for the service of worship had been legally provided under a rental contract entered into by the Administrative Centre of Jehovah’s Witnesses, a registered legal entity, of which the local religious groups were structural divisions.
18.  On 22 March 2007 the Moscow City Court quashed the District Court’s judgment in the part concerning the finding of unlawfulness in the actions of the police:
“It appears from the register of persons detained or escorted to the police station that the plaintiffs were taken to the police station to give statements ... and spent no more than three hours at the police station, which cannot be considered as detention.
Thus, the actions of the police patrol unit of the Lyublino police station in escorting the plaintiffs to the police station were carried out within the framework of the Police Act, and there is no basis for pronouncing unlawful their actions in stopping the unlawful religious service and escorting the plaintiffs to the police station for the purposes of taking their statements and inspecting [their] identity documents.”
19.  The City Court upheld the remainder of the judgment and dismissed the applicants’ arguments in a summary fashion:
“The fact that the service of worship held by the Lyublinskaya and Krasnodonskaya religious groups, which are part of the centralised religious organisation ‘The Administrative Centre of Witnesses’ [sic], was conducted on behalf of that organisation and on premises paid for by it does not in itself exempt it from [the need to meet] the requirements [applicable to] religious groups when conducting religious services, since the activity of that organisation is banned in Moscow.
The court has considered the other arguments in the appeal ... [They] involved in essence a different interpretation of the law and a re-evaluation of evidence ... and these cannot constitute grounds for reversing a court decision on appeal”.